Some strange graffiti started to appear in the village some
summers ago on the walls of shops, and schools, and houses, and under
the newly-built railway bridge that leads into the town. Unlike a lot of the
other graffiti in the village, it contained no obscenities, no insults, no
boasts, and no rugby teams. ralph loves ethel was all it said, and then the
letters T, L, and F joined into one the familiar sign of true love
forever.
Its first known appearance was on the wall of
Tilda Warbucks house. She was hanging her washing out on Monday morning
when she spotted it ralph loves ethel, tlf in surprisingly neat yellow
spraypaint. Tilda phoned the police, and twenty minutes later PC Balding
a cheerful, bowling-pin-shaped officer came to investigate. The first
thing that struck PC Balding was the name of the culprits: they werent
the kind of names he was used to seeing daubed in graffiti. He asked Tilda some
routine questions and said he would call the council and get them to remove the
graffiti. Tilda was very thankful. Its a great weight off me
mind, she said.
The next day the graffiti appeared again, on the
door of Pete Shackletons council flat. Pete Shackleton was known to
the police, as the saying goes, having been arrested a few times for
being drunk and disorderly, and once for impersonating a policeman. PC Balding
again went to investigate, and as far as he could tell the graffiti was
identical ralph loves ethel, tlf in the same neat yellow spraypaint. He
asked Pete some routine questions and said he would call the council and get
them to remove the graffiti. Pete took a swig from his can of Skol and told him
not to bother. Ill phone the twats meself, he said.
The day after that, on the wall of the local
school, the graffiti made its third known appearance. The headmaster, Mr
Burton, spotted it whilst whistling his way through the playground, and after
conducting a stern assembly about the illegality and anti-social nature of
graffiti, he called the police. Again PC Balding went to investigate, and
again, as far as he could tell, the graffiti was identical. He asked Mr Burton
some routine questions and said he would call the council and get them to
remove the graffiti. Mr Burton assured him there was no need, saying he would
get some of the kids to remove it that afternoon. Therell be a
lesson in it for them, he said, somewhere.
By this time the graffiti, and the unknown
culprits, had started to perplex PC Balding greatly. Most graffiti-artists are
teenagers, but Ralph and Ethel didnt sound like a pair of teenagers: they
sounded more like an elderly couple, and PC Balding couldnt for the life
of him imagine an elderly couple going round daubing graffiti on other
peoples property. He asked his colleagues if they were aware of any
youngsters in the village named either Ralph or Ethel, but none of them were.
That night he asked his friends the same question, and was given the same
answer. So he went to bed none the wiser.
The next morning the graffiti seemed to be
everywhere. PC Balding walked through the town on his way to work and must have
seen it at least twenty times, in a variety of different places
sometimes on its own, and sometimes nestled in amongst the more run-of-the-mill
graffiti PC Balding was used to seeing and each time he saw it he felt
his heart give a little shudder, as though there was something sinister about
it. He even mentioned it to Sergeant Barraclough when he got to the station,
but Sergeant Barraclough said he had more important things to worry about than
graffiti. He recommended that PC Balding get the council to remove it, and then
forget all about it. So PC Balding called the council, and by the end of the
day all traces of the graffiti had been removed.
The next day, walking through town, PC Balding
didnt see one sign of the graffiti. This, if anything, perplexed him more
than it pleased him, and he arrived at work feeling a little let-down. All day
long he expected a call from someone complaining about graffiti; but the call
never came. As suddenly as the graffiti had appeared, it had vanished. At six
oclock he left the station and started his walk home. Halfway there he
decided to call in at The Butchers Legs, where he sat down with a pint of
lager and the local newspaper. He never read the obituaries, so he didnt
see the notice thanking the family and friends of Ralph and Ethel Muntley for
attending their funeral on Sunday a day before the graffiti started
appearing. In fact, it wasnt until a month later, a few days after his
own funeral, when the words PC Balding woz ere suddenly started to
appear around the village, that he finally managed to solve the mystery. But by
that time, of course, he had become a part of it himself.